RACIAL NECROPOLITICS: THE SPATIAL PRODUCTION OF DEATH IN THE CITY OF SÃO PAULO
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Abstract
The article suggests that there is a unequal distribution of violent deaths in the urban space of the municipality of São Paulo. The poorest urban areas appear as the main places of lethal violence. To the articulation among urban space, race, and violence I name as spatialization of death. Analysis of the high incidence of deaths by fatal diseases among whites and blacks suggests a concentration of death among the later adding to the homicidal violence that historically have targeted this group, here theorized as the Agamben’s paradigmatic figure of homo sacer. The article discusses also the gender dimension of lethal violence in the city, addressing the dynamic of mortality among women. Based on Foucault’s concepts of biopower and governmentality, the work also suggests that the concentration of death in predominately black neighborhoods constitutes a state-sponsored necropolitic. Such politic of death is expressed in the state omission and/or its complicity with the morbid patterns of racial relations in Brazil.
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